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| Titel |
From the low past to the high future: Plant growth across CO2 levels |
| VerfasserIn |
Andries Temme, Will Cornwell, Hans Cornelissen, Rien Aerts |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2014
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 16 (2014) |
| Datensatznummer |
250096119
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2014-11606.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| In today’s atmosphere fossil fuel emissions and land use change since the industrial
revolution have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration from 280 ppm to nearly 400 ppm, a
value not experienced by plants for over 10 million years. In contrast, over the same period
atmospheric CO2 levels have been much lower than preindustrial levels. Plants’ recent
evolutionary history has thus been under carbon starvation while over the next 90 years
atmospheric CO2 is expected to rise to a bountiful ~800 ppm. Plants’ response to this rapid
increase is likely influenced by their long evolution in low CO2, but this has been hardly
studied at all. Very little is known about how plant traits drove carbon cycling in the past and
how these relationships may shift going from past to future CO2.In a climate chamber
experiment we germinated and grew seedlings of 30 species (C3, C4, woody, herbaceous) at
past low CO2 (150ppm), ambient CO2, and future high CO2(750ppm). Our aim was to
understand how plant traits are affected by CO2 and if and why winners and losers in
terms of growth performance shift going from past to future CO2 concentrations.
Results show a great effect of low and high CO2 on specific leaf area, biomass and
allocation shifts above and belowground but mixed results in patterns between species
and plant types. Ongoing work focuses on leaf level chemistry and photosynthesis
and the interaction between CO2 and drought stress with promising initial results. |
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